In this Issue: One Climate: John Davis on this summer’s mega-storms; Taking Women’s Lives Seriously: Laura Carlsen on sexual violence; Land of the Forbidden Fan: Ned Sublette reports from Cuba; The Russian Revolutions Revisited by John Wight; Can We Finally Unite? by Lee Ballinger. Donna Brazile and the Machine by Yvette Carnell; Trump’s Nuclear Nihilism by Jeffrey St. Clair. Plus: Chris Floyd on the opioid crisis; Julie Work and Daniel Raventos on Catalonia; Ruth Fowler on sexual commodification; Mike Whitney on widening inequality; Wesley Wright on Ceramics and Social Consciousness.
Exclusively in the New Print Issue of CounterPunch
Homeland Security’s Multibillion Dollar Comedy Show
After the 9/11 attacks, Congress and the Bush administration pretended that unlimited federal spending was one of the best ways to thwart terrorist threats. In 2002, Congress created the Homeland Security Department (DHS), sweeping some of the most inept federal agencies, such as the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), into the new mega-department. Congress also created numerous programs — some run directly by FEMA — to shovel out more than $30 billion in anti-terrorism funding to local and state governments. More
Big Media on Last Thursday’s Vote in Catalonia: “Never Mind”
Americans of a certain age will almost all remember Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella character from NBC’s Saturday Night Live. She was the little old lady who regularly appeared on the Weekend Update mock news program to give her opinion on the pressing events of the day. Week after week she would launch into involved explanations More
Go Ask Alice: the Curious Case of “Alice Donovan”
Like most back alleys of RussiaGate, the tracks of this story are murky. Murky in a Kafkaesque kind of way. Nothing is entirely clear. Nothing seems quite definitive. Conjecture builds on conjecture and still doesn’t add up to something entirely whole.
A young writer sends off some of her first stories to a variety of online news sites. She tries a few times and then gets a bite. Her byline appears on several outlets. But one of her very first submissions is somehow snagged by an intelligence agency, perhaps the NSA, and kicked over to the FBI. Someone is monitoring her email traffic. She is suspected of posing behind a false identity, operating as a troll for Russia, at a time when Russia is politically toxic. She isn’t informed of this surveillance or the suspicions about her. Neither are any of the writers or editors that she may be communicating with. None of her stories focus specifically on Russia. When they do mention Russia, it’s largely in the context of the Syrian war. Some are critical of Hillary Clinton. Others are critical of Donald Trump. Mostly the stories are about policy, not politics. None are especially earth-shaking. They are read, but not widely disseminated.
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Interview with Mexican Reporter Emilio Gutiérrez, Who Fears Death If ICE Deports Him
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STEVE HORN
